Discussion - Amp vs Direct

A

acuevo

Member
Just curious lately how many of us “pedal platformer” guys (and gals) are running direct these days?

Personally my journey has taken me through a tube amp snobbery stage and finally back to where i started, with pedals. And now, running fully direct with and amp/cab sim into either studio monitors or direct to the board at church (on the rare occasions i’m playing guitar there instead of drums).

I always got frustrated with the lack of consistency with amps/speaker cabs. Sounds great at home, sounds awful at band practice unless i stand RIGHT HERE…. the inevitable volume wars between guitarists. Ears ringing after rehearsals. Closed back cabs that you can only hear when you stand right in the path of sound, etc etc.

I realize, IEMs fix a lot of this but what you get with that is exactly what an amp/cab sim aims to achieve - a mic’d guitar amp, which we all know sounds very different from the proverbial “amp in the room”

Doing this also highlights the DRAMATIC changes that different speakers/cab configurations can bring. Knowing this now, i can really say the speakers and cab have the BIGGEST effect on overall tone. My only current amp (marshall origin) is simply for testing my own designs and frankly, any pedal i put in front of it sounds the same as the last and i’m convinced its because of the speaker thats in it.

So i’m curious - how many of us are running live amps vs running a sim direct? I have been very happy with the results of running direct since i switched about 2 years ago and doubt i’ll ever go back. (Except maybe another mesa mark series just for fun if i ever have an extra $3k floating around)
 
I'm about 90% there. Same as you with a church gig, although I get back together with my old 70's band from time to time. I went from using an amp/cab in an isolation room to using a Peavey 6505mh with the speaker defeated and its onboard cab sim direct to FOH. I simplified that by going with my current Blackstar Amped II with its cab sim direct. So essentially, I'm using the pedal approach. Using IEM as well so makes it simple. With the 70's band it's a fly date so I just toss the Amped in my suitcase and borrow a speaker cab and we use floor monitors.

I've had a Helix for a while now and have struggled to get it to sound good to FOH but think I have my issues sorted out so will likely go that route and abandon pedals all together in a live setting. Famous last words...
 
I’ve never ran amp-less live. There’s long periods of time where I ran pedal-less though.

I’ve got some amp sim hardware and plugins, but they don’t get used. I get bored with them. I usually practice with a 5w tube amp. Old habits die hard I guess. 🤷‍♂️

Something that keeps me from going ampless is that I make extensive use of feedback. All “feedback simulators” in existence are 1-dimensional and woefully inadequate. Which makes sense. You would have to emulate location and space between the guitar and amp in real-time.

So I could use an amp sim, and a wedge to get feedback. But at that point why bother with trying to emulate a guitar amp?

When I use in-ears at practice, I use a 57 on the grill, center-cone. I put a small mark on my grillcloth so I can line up the mic quick.
 
I run my amp clean and get all my OD sounds from the pedals. If I had a fleshed out PA setup/in ears, I would go ampless. If I was able to rely on the sound guy for the right mix, and/or mix the in ears with the rest of the band myself, then no question I'd rather use that as it's much easier to hear and keeps hearing damage to a minimum. But for anything else, I like the simplicity and reliability of using my amp.
 
I’m happiest with an old school amp. I’ve tried (and own) both the Strymon Irridium and one of the newer Simplifier, (which I like better than the Irridium) bought more for the ability to play later at night, through headphones. But then, I started using GarageBand as a recording platform, and have messed with their amp and cab sims for a bit, and was surprised at how decent I could get them to sound, both through good headphones and studio monitors.

I’ve never tried any of the top tier simulators, but totally get that they could work well. That said, I still really prefer the sound coming out of my tube amps. I typically play with very little distortion—something like the Mercurial, or Chop Shop with the gain around 9, is already my “distorted” sound. (And that running those at 18 volts!) One of my amps, a TopHat that is more or less AC15 based, does start to break up very early, but for the past few years, I’ve really been more into a fender Brown/black cleans. (2 x 10 combo is my sweet spot)
 
I was pretty much forced to go direct 6 years ago with no opportunity to play live probably ever again, wether it’s “ampless” or not might be open to interpretation running tube preamp with power section and cab emulation, I wan running a load on a real amp, but burning up power tubes just to run through head phones seemed like a waste of tubes and money. Despite that I’m still hanging onto my 4x12 with V30s for that day that will probably never come. And it might be weird playing through a real cab again.
 
I have and enjoy a tube amp. I've played live and recorded with it as well.

But most of the time I use a modular kind of ampless rig. I have a Bogner Ecstasy Blue that I use as a preamp and a little TC Electronic IR loader. Dry effects go in front of the Bogner and wet effects go between the Bogner and the TC. This is basically the same way I would run effects with an amp that had an effects loop. It all fits on a Pedal Train Jr! This setup covers most use cases for me.
 
I do both but record all my instruments direct, which feels kind of backward. It's mostly a convenience thing. Swapping pre-amps or fiddling with a cab sim is generally easier than re-mic'ing. And I doubt anyone will really notice or care when I share the final product. My mediocre mixing skills are probably a bigger detriment vs my setup. I've had trouble getting a good fuzz sound direct. I'm probably running my signal too hot into my interface.

As much as I hate moving cabs I don't think I'd want to go ampless live. 90% of the venues I've played haven't had professional audio, so I probably couldn't get away with it anyways. My go-to move was always to set my mv at like 3 o'clock so everyone would have too much hearing damage to notice all the mistakes I was making.
 
I’m following this thread because as an at home player at this point going forward and I’m wanting to go amp less. My tinnitus has gotten bad enough I want to really be able to control the volume. I’ll keep the little Vibrochamp I’ve had forever and the GA-18T clone I built, but I’m ditching everything else as soon as someone will buy it. I’ve picked up a few NeuralDSP and Mixwave plugins to play through my monitors and they seem to work nice, but I’d like to be able to skip the PC when I just want to plug n play. I’ve had some multiFX boards years ago and whether they sound good or not I just find them a PITA to use and I build pedals anyway 😜. I’m thinking something simple like an Iridium might be most useful for that scenario.
 
+1 for the DSM simplifier! its what i’ve been using for about a year or so. Fender pre/power amp and the 412 greenbacks!

Wow this is already a great discussion! With perspectives i hadn’t considered. I haven’t played live outside of church in i don’t know how long so i didn’t even consider some venues might not even be able to accommodate direct guitar!
 
jcpst said:
I’ve never ran amp-less live. There’s long periods of time where I ran pedal-less though.

I’ve got some amp sim hardware and plugins, but they don’t get used. I get bored with them. I usually practice with a 5w tube amp. Old habits die hard I guess. 🤷‍♂️

Something that keeps me from going ampless is that I make extensive use of feedback.
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I should’ve read this more carefully! Yes, me too! I prefer full hollow bodies largely because the ease in creating feedback (and also fullness of timbre and auto “reverb”). I’m trying to wean myself from keeping my foot on my volume pedal, but when I’m ready to let feedback build, I need to control it via my trusty volume pedal.
 
I have a 1x12 and a pedal baby that I should probably sell, I'm almost 100% headphones now.
HX Stomp is my usual amp, and I have a Tonex One but am not happy with it.
 
My touring days have been long gone but in the 5+ years on the road I used a Roland JC-120 for a year and then a JMP-50 and 4x12 for the rest of my time. I still have the rig, just don't have a place to play it (or the desire to carry it). Marshall sounded stooopid good though.
 
Blooze said:
I’m following this thread because as an at home player at this point going forward and I’m wanting to go amp less. My tinnitus has gotten bad enough I want to really be able to control the volume. I’ll keep the little Vibrochamp I’ve had forever and the GA-18T clone I built, but I’m ditching everything else as soon as someone will buy it. I’ve picked up a few NeuralDSP and Mixwave plugins to play through my monitors and they seem to work nice, but I’d like to be able to skip the PC when I just want to plug n play. I’ve had some multiFX boards years ago and whether they sound good or not I just find them a PITA to use and I build pedals anyway 😜. I’m thinking something simple like an Iridium might be most useful for that scenario.
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I have a few neural dsp plugins as well and they’re the best software based guitar sounds i’ve ever gotten. One day i may convert to a quad cortex as the thing looks simply awesome and streamlined. there is still something just fun about a board full of pedals though 😁
 
I went from tube amps to the Sansamp GT-2 to the first era of digital modelers (first Fractal rack unit), then to plugins (Neural DSP plugins with a MIDI foot controller was where I thought I would stay and I think it blows Fractal away). I still felt something missing, so started building analog pedals into the chain. Better, but not quite. I have finally landed on a Synergy tube preamp rack unit with a couple of pedal drawers - so full-circle!
 
CA138 said:
I went from tube amps to the Sansamp GT-2 to the first era of digital modelers (first Fractal rack unit), then to plugins (Neural DSP plugins with a MIDI foot controller was where I thought I would stay and I think it blows Fractal away). I still felt something missing, so started building analog pedals into the chain. Better, but not quite. I have finally landed on a Synergy tube preamp rack unit with a couple of pedal drawers - so full-circle!
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How do you like the Synergy?
 
I use tube amps run clean and my (mostly DIY) pedals, for gigs, band rehearsals, and generally for solo practice as well. But I'll admit that I'm conflicted. I think the ampless/direct-to-board approach is certainly far more practical, and (except for the guitar tone/gear snobs), likely much better for the audience, and certainly easier for the sound guy. But I do find that there's some intangible magic to playing through my DIY pedals and tube amps!

In my area we have this thriving "dad band" community, and we do a little production every year at our neighborhood elementary school. Several parent bands, each playing a few songs. We used to use an acoustic drum kit and tube amps. This is in an elementary school gym: perfectly rectangular space that's basically all hard surfaces. Everyone (rightfully) complained about the sound. This year we used an electronic drum kit. We still used actual amps, but everyone was able to bring down their volume because we brought the electronic drum kit volume way down. So it wasn't a true direct-to-board "silent stage", but was a decidedly quiet(er) stage. The net result was that the audience heard (mostly) only what the sound guy mixed, as opposed to the house PA mix and the too-loud stage volume bleeding through. The net result was much much better.

Based on this, I am about to spring for an electronic drum kit for my home practice space. My band has been practicing at my house, in my basement. Acoustic drums set the minimum volume level for the band. And acoustic drums are loud. The experience at the show I described above made me feel like there's a happy medium here: you can still have at least some of the tube amp goodness, just not at wake-the-dead volumes. And at this point, to me, it's not that different than using e.g. a modeler with a floor monitor (or FRFR speaker) to act as your "amp". In other words, the amp's main purpose is to be your personal monitor. You can angle it towards you, and turn it down. Then use a DI box or just mic it, and the sound guy's job just got dramatically easier, as he can make a better mix for the audience, and the band can decide how much of you goes in the stage monitors.

Put another way - every practice I had was so loud, I was wearing ear plugs to protect my hearing. At this point, the earplugs basically neuter all the joy of running my rig. So I'm left with the choice of destroy my hearing, or use the earplugs and have crap sound. With the edrum kit, I should be able to keep the overall volume down enough that the earplugs aren't necessary, but still better sound quality than loud with earplugs. (Maybe if I sprung for some custom musician's earplugs, I'd have a better earplug experience? But my family will appreciate quieter band practices too!)

I've bought my way into being the "sound engineer" for these local gigs we do, e.g. neighborhood block parties. And for outdoor gigs, I've found that stage volume is a little easier to deal with. So the band can spread out a bit more - more specifically, we can all stand a little farther away from the drummer, and the amps can be opened up a bit more without swamping the PA. So for instances like this, I absolutely love using my DR504 clone with 2x12 cab. But now that I'm additionally lugging all this PA gear, I'm starting to see the benefit of "small and light" gear. So again, even when I have the luxury of bringing a big tube amp and turning it up, I still have to make a tradeoff of the great sound versus the tedium of lugging a lot of big, heavy equipment up and down stairs, and in and out of cars, etc.

I did buy a Quilter OD202 amp head. I haven't gigged with it yet, but I've used it many times at home for solo practice, and for a few band practices as well. Paired with a modern neodymium speaker, this is capable of wake-the-dead volumes, but in a not-too-big package and incredibly light weight. And virtually maintenance-free (at least compared to a tube amp). And it does sound pretty good - but it still lacks the "mojo" or whatever indescribable vibe I get from the tube amp (and I fully admit, part of that is DIY bias, it's always more satisfying to me to play something I DIY'ed versus COTS; but there could well be some "vintage fetishism" at play too).
 
The magic recipe for my band’s rehearsals has been mic everything and run in-ear monitors. It’s an investment and up-front work, but if you have a long term jam room you can just leave the kit mic’d and everything dialed in. I leave one of my amps over there.

Even the bass player uses his amp, though the signal we hear is direct. It’s all about that feeling of moving air. I can still get my feedback, and we can hear each other better.

Also, we let the DAW roll when we practice, and we end up with a studio-quality multitrack recording. I record every practice. It’s a nice upgrade from recording on my phone.

If I had a modeler, I think I’d still want something screen-less. Like a Boss IR-2 or one of those Fender Tonemaster amps.
 
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